More Denton: Reply to David (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 28, 2015, 23:13 (3197 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: The intelligence of bacteria is central to my suggestion that evolution is driven by the inventiveness of organisms themselves, ....Your anthropocentric hypothesis leaves you wriggling around to explain the enormous diversity of life, and all its comings and goings, whereas mine gives a direct explanation.-'Direct explanation' does not correct explanation. Action by God is just as direct.
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> dhw: You have scurried back to your nebulous “intelligent information”, which we already dissected ages ago. What is it supposed to mean here? There is “information” that comes to all organisms from outside and requires processing if they are to survive, adapt, or innovate. There is “information” within all organisms that enables them to do the processing.-Same issue. The original DNA of earliest life is a code that contains information. All codes contain information. Information just doesn't appear out of thin air. It can develop from thoughtful observation with experience or it can be given as in schooling.- dhw: My counter hypothesis is that this internal information is in the form of intelligence (the equivalent of the human brain) which does its own processing and takes its own decisions. There is a colossal difference between the two, and it is the latter that the experts have described quite explicitly, without any hyperbole.-What you are saying is, in the earliest single cell groups of molecules trying to act as life forms there was no information to run life, but somehow they had the intelligence to develop the information for life. It makes no sense at all. Living matter follows a continuum from the very first life to now. Understanding that life appears when DNA information is available for life is key to understanding the discussion about information. Information is never intelligence. Intelligence can interpret information and intelligence can create more information, but only after there is enough initial information to have life then create intelligence. Chicken and egg problem! No way around it, except panpsychism as an attribute of a panentheistic God.